FEDERAL TIMES

The House has passed a spending bill that fails to specify a pay raise amount and bars employees' health insurers from covering abortions.

By remaining silent on the pay raise issue, the House legislation passed July 19, 216-211, assumes the president's pay plan will become effective.

President Clinton proposed a 2.4 percent raise for General Schedule employees in January. Clinton's budget plan said the administration would consult with employee organizations and others over whether the amount should be divided between across-the-board raises and locality adjustments.

It is possible the Senate could be more specific about the pay raise when it acts on the fiscal 1996 Treasury appropriations bill  probably the week of July 24. But usually it is the House, not the Senate, that sets the pay raise.

If the Senate remains silent, or endorses the president's plan, the question will be left up to the administration. The administration has until the end of August to propose an alternative pay plan, or stick with its current proposal.

The bill also reinstates a ban on abortions under the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program.

Women enrolled in FEHBP, unlike millions in private-sector plans, would have to pay for abortions themselves.

Under a plan to balance the federal budget by 2007, federal retirees' annuities would be reduced 2 percent to 4 percent over the rest of their lives. Annuities would be calculated using an average salary over four or five years, instead of the three-year average used now.

Four-year averages would be used for people retiring in calendar year 1997. And five-year averages would be used from 1998 on.

Employees asked to joint

building security committees

Employees in more than 350 buildings are beginning building safety reviews.

As part of President Clinton's security review, agencies are tapping employees to join building security committees. The committees are to decide whether their buildings meet security standards outlined by the Justice Department.

Clinton called for the security report April 20, the day after a truck bomb explosion at the Alfred P. Murrah building in Oklahoma City killed 168 people.

July 15 was the deadline for agencies in buildings with more than 450 employees to establish security committees.

According to the standards, employees will review:

* Control over adjacent parking;

* Requiring employees to wear photo ID cards;

* Installing magnetometer screening machines at all entrances;

* X-ray screening of all mail and packages;

* Hiring more security guards;

* High-security locks and shatterproof glass.

Cherry Point taking on additional work

With growing talk about privatizing Defense Department jobs, employees at Cherry Point Naval Aviation Depot, N.C., hope their work will speak volumes.

Cherry Point will bring in 22 additional aircraft over its regular schedule of 28 from July through September. This will be the depot's biggest surge since Operation Desert Storm.

"This will be a golden opportunity to show what a government depot can do in an environment where there's lot of talk about commercialization," said Marine Corps Lt. Col. Eugene Conti, director of depot operations.

Employees at the coastal North Carolina Navy depot, located on a Marine Corps air station, don't have a monopoly on elbow grease. Their colleagues at depots in Jacksonville, Fla., and North Island, Calif., also are cranking out additional aircraft.

The Navy recently allocated more money for an influx of maintenance work on its aging fleet of helicopters and fighter jets.

North Island has added 23 F/A-18s this year, primarily because a Navy maintenance contract with Hill AFB, Utah, expired. Jacksonville anticipates a surge this fall.

Cherry Point anticipates a 19 percent increase in overtime during the next year, said James Williams, president of International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers Local 2297.

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